A number of things happened recently to provide me with a topic for this post. Yesterday I went to the eye doctor to get “piano glasses,” which will let me see the notes without tilting my head back when I play for the people in Notre Dame Village on Sundays. Then this morning on a Christian music CD I heard a song whose lyrics repeated, “Everywhere I go I see You.” Then in the day’s reflection on St. Hildegard I read that she “presented a picture of human beings and the cosmos as emanations of God’s love, ‘living sparks’ or ‘rays of his splendor, just as the rays of the sun proceed from the sun itself.” ” Everything then has the power to remind us of God.
I saw God in the full moon this week and in the geese formation flying over our pine trees this morning. I saw God in the women at St. Basil’s who attentively listened to my talk on the Holy Spirit. I saw God in the face of the Sister who helped me measure my PD (pupil distance) for the glasses. I see God in this computer that my brother enabled me to purchase and that allows me to communicate with the world. I also see God in me when I look into a mirror or study my hands.
When we look at things and realize that God’s presence keeps them in existence, then we see things with “real eyes.” Sometimes we are oblivious to sights that could move us to praise and love God. During a walk, we need to stop and ponder the yellow wild flower or the little frog sunning on our path. Or we need to stop work every now and then and look out the window to observe the changing leaves or the fluffy white clouds sailing across the sky.
While writing the book Ultimate Questions: How Major Religions Respond, I learned that Daoists believe in qi,“a primal matrix of energy” from which all matter emerges. For them this is not a personal God. Interestingly, when I attended a session on Reiki (ki or qi) at a public library this week, the master explained that this practice promotes peace and harmony within a person. The practitioner is a channel that allow the energy that permeates the universe to flow through him or her and into the patient. This energy can be thought of as life, love, God, or Jesus.
Where have you seen God this week?
